Original Research by School Decision on Maddock Elementary School
Maddock Elementary School sits in the heart of a small, fully rural agricultural community in Benson County, North Dakota. The town of Maddock is a quiet prairie place with local shops, a seasonal rodeo, and ready access to outdoor recreation, including Devils Lake a short drive to the northeast and numerous pothole lakes popular with waterfowl hunters and anglers. The community has been losing population gradually over decades, a pattern typical of small agricultural towns across the northern Great Plains, and the housing market reflects that reality with very low home values and rents. There is no indication of new development or growth initiatives on the horizon. For a family considering this area, the school is deeply woven into a compact rural town where commerce is small-scale, civic infrastructure is minimal, and the economic base is farming and related services.
The school serves pre-kindergarten through eighth grade and is part of Maddock 9, the local public school district. It is a regular public school, not a charter or magnet, and it is very small even by rural standards, with roughly ninety students spread across ten grade levels. That means individual grade cohorts are tiny, sometimes just a handful of children. The student body is almost entirely white, with a small number of American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, and Hispanic students. Just over a third of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Data on students with individualized education programs and English learners was not available, so those population sizes are unknown.
Academic results from the 2024-25 school year come from North Dakota's A-PLUS assessment, which is a new assessment with changed cut scores, meaning results are not directly comparable to prior years and no trend analysis is possible yet. Participation was reported at a consistent level across the tested grades.
In English language arts, the school looks solid. The overall proficiency rate sits around the midpoint, with third and fifth graders landing in the upper portion of the reported range and seventh graders in a somewhat lower band. Reading appears to be a relative strength here, and the results suggest most students are meeting grade-level expectations in literacy.
Mathematics is a softer area. The overall proficiency rate is low, with fifth and seventh grade results falling in the lower portion of the reported range and third grade somewhat higher. This is the kind of result a parent may want to look into further with the school, asking how instruction is structured across grade bands and what supports are in place for students who are not yet proficient. The school does not serve high school grades, so there is no graduation rate to report, and the pre-kindergarten through second grade levels are not assessed by the state.
Science results stand out as a genuine strength, with a proficiency rate well above what most would expect for a school of this size and setting. That figure suggests the school is doing something effective in science instruction, whether through hands-on investigation, strong teaching, or a curriculum that connects well to the rural environment around the school.
No program offerings, course access, staffing ratios, attendance, discipline, or civil-rights data were available in the provided materials, so those dimensions of the school cannot be characterized here. The school's website through Maddock Public Schools would be the natural next stop for a parent wanting detail on extracurriculars, teaching staff, or specialized programming.
What the data does show is a very small rural school where reading and science are holding their own and math is a concern worth asking about. The peer environment is intimate by necessity, with small cohorts meaning children know everyone in their grade and likely across grades. For a family drawn to rural life, agricultural community, and the outdoor culture of the northern prairie, Maddock Elementary offers a setting where a child will not be anonymous. The tradeoff is limited program breadth and a community in long-term population decline, which can affect everything from class size stability to the range of peers a child encounters. A parent weighing this school should ask the district directly about math supports, middle-grade transition planning for high school, and what enrichment or intervention resources are available to such a small staff.
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